Brockton-area police and drug treatment professionals blame the heroin epidemic on the new generation of prescription painkillers, including OxyContin and Percocet, which get people hooked and then get them looking for cheaper alternatives such as heroin.

Maria Papadopoulos

Second in a two-part update of the Wasted Youth series on heroin addiction and the vise-like grip it has had on the region for more than a decade.

Part 1 in Sunday’s Enterprise: Eastern Massachusetts outpaces much of the nation in heroin-fueled emergency room visits and admissions to state treatment programs for painkiller addictions.

The findings in two recent federal studies – that heroin addiction has a firm grip on Eastern Massachusetts – come as no surprise to police and drug treatment professionals working in the greater Brockton and Taunton region. They’ve been seeing and talking about it for years, ever since powerful prescription painkillers including OxyContin, became the preferred way among young people to get high.

It begins when someone chasing a high pops a stolen prescription painkiller, they say. Soon, he’s hooked and has a habit he can no longer afford to feed. So, he turns to a much cheaper way to feed the addiction: heroin.

“These prescription drugs, Oxycodone, Vicodin, Percocet, they’re like just using heroin. They’re the same as heroin,” said Carol Kowalski, director of Brockton High Point Treatment Center in Brockton, which also has sites in Plymouth and New Bedford.

In the past three months in one program at the High Point Treatment Center in Brockton, half of the patients were under the age of 30, and 75 percent reported using heroin and other opiates, she said.

The Enterprise in its ongoing series “Wasted Youth,” began reporting five years ago on the local heroin epidemic and how the increased availability and potency of prescription painkillers has been feeding it.

Two recent federal studies confirm what local drug treatment workers and police have been saying: Eastern Massachusetts outpaces much of the nation in heroin-fueled emergency room visits and admissions to state treatment programs for painkiller addictions.

The problem is both in the cities and small towns, the reports from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration say. And things haven’t improved, despite the efforts of police to take illegal drugs off the streets and drug treatment centers to get addicts clean and keep them that way.

“I haven’t seen any of this get better in the eight years I’ve been doing it. I’ve not seen it slow down,” said Joanne Peterson, founder of Learn to Cope, a local support group for families of opiate addicts.

She blames easy access to prescription drugs and the companies that make and sell them for the ongoing heroin epidemic.

“Someone’s got to draw the line somewhere on these pharmaceutical companies that are making more powerful opiates,” Peterson said. “They know damn well what’s going to happen to those drugs. They end up in the wrong hands of the wrong people.”

One such drug is Percocet tablets, known on the street as “blues” or “threes.” Percocet, and its generic equivalent, began appearing in the region in recent years as tougher laws and increased awareness made it harder to get the near-pure narcotic OxyContin.

Newer, more powerful Percocet pills are known as “Perc 30” and have six times the opiate of a regular Percocet, which contains five milligrams of oxycodone.

Perc 30s sell for about $30 each, and addicts turn to shooting heroin into their veins through a needle when they can no longer afford the pills, East Bridgewater Det. Sgt. Scott Allen said.

Allen, the head of the WEB Major Crimes and Drug Task Force which includes police from West Bridgewater, East Bridgewater, Bridgewater, Whitman and Bridgewater State University, described a typical scenario.

A person starts taking Perc 30s and is soon addicted and taking five pills a day. That’s a $1,050-a-week habit. That’s when the switch to much cheaper heroin happens, Allen said.

“It’s skyrocketed,” he said of the Perc-30 problem. They have replaced OxyContin as the prescription painkiller of choice of people in their teens and 20s, he said.

And once they’re hooked, their lives are no longer their own, Dr. Joseph Shrand said. He treats addicts between the ages of 13 and 17 at the Clean And Sober Teens Living Empowered program at High Point Treatment Center in Brockton.

“They steal our stuff, they rob people,” Shrand said of addicts. “But the stuff that’s really been stolen is that person. Drugs have really stolen that person from us. It’s up to us to be vigilant and to give a helping hand.”

Maria Papadopoulos may be reached at mpapadopoulos@enterprisenews.com.

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